A group of faculty at Penn have written A Vision for a New Future of the University of Pennsylvania at https://pennforward.com/. They encourage signatures, even if you're not associated with Penn. I signed.
Big picture: Universities stand at a crossroads. Do universities choose pursuit of knowledge, the robust open and uncomfortable debate that requires; excellence and meritocracy, even if as in the past that has meant admitting socially disfavored groups? Or do universities exist to advance, advocate for, and inculcate a particular political agenda? Choose.
Returning to the former will require structural changes, and founding documents are an important part of that rebuilding effort. For example, Penn and Stanford are searching for new presidents. A joint statement by board and president that this document will guide rebuilding efforts could be quite useful in guiding that search and the new Presidents' house-cleaning.
There is some danger in excerpting such a document, but here are a few tasty morsels:
Principles:
Penn’s sole aim going forward will be to foster excellence in research and education.
Specifics:
Intellectual diversity and openness of thought. The University of Pennsylvania’s core mission is the pursuit, enhancement, and dissemination of knowledge and of the free exchange of ideas that is necessary to that goal.....
Civil discourse. The University of Pennsylvania ... acknowledges that no party possesses the moral authority to monopolize the truth or censor opponents and that incorrect hypotheses are rejected only by argument and persuasion, logic and evidence, not suppression or ad-hominen attacks.
Political neutrality at the level of administration. ... In their capacity as university representatives, administrators will abstain from commenting on societal and political events...
The University must remain neutral to scientific investigation, respect the scientific method, and strive to include many and varied approaches in its research orientation.
Admissions, hiring, promotion
... No factor such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, or religious associations shall be considered over merit in any decision related to the appointment, advancement, or reappointment of academic, administrative, or support staff at any level. Excellence in research, teaching, and service shall drive every appointment, advancement, reappointment, or hiring decision.
no factor such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, or religious associations shall be considered in any decision related to student admission and aid.
Faculty committed to academic excellence must have a supervisory role in the admission process of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. Admission policies should prioritize the fair treatment of each individual applicant, and criteria must be objective, transparent, and clearly communicated to all community members.
Faculty have outsourced admissions to bureaucrats. While the cats are away, the mice play. Faculty complain the students are dumb snowflakes. Well, read some files. And no more "bad personality" scores for asians.
Education:
A central goal of education is to train students to be critical thinkers, virtuous citizens, and ethical participants in free and open but civilized and respectful debate that produces, refines, and transmits knowledge.
Competition:
as Penn’s competitors struggle to define their mission and lose their focus on this manner of excellence, Penn has a unique opportunity to emerge as a globally leading academic institution in an ever more competitive international landscape....
An unconditional commitment to academic excellence will become Penn’s key comparative advantage in the decades to come. As many other universities in Europe and the U.S. compromise their hiring decisions by including other non-academic criteria, Penn will be able to hire outstanding talent that otherwise would have been hard to attract.
I have been puzzled that the self-immolation of (formerly) elite universities has not led to a dash for quality in the second ranks. There is a lot of great talent for sale cheap. But many second rank schools seem to have bought in to The Agenda even more strongly than the elite. I guess they used to copy the elite desire for research, and now they copy the elite desire for fashionable politics. Or perhaps donors government, alumni or whatever it is that universities compete for also are more interested in the size of the DEI bureaucracy than the research accomplishments and teaching quality of the faculty or the competence of the students. Clearly, the writers of this document think in the long run competition will return to the production and dissemination of knowledge, and that universities that reform first will win.
I note that the statement does not explicitly forbid the university from favouring children of donors or faculty. Wouldn't that be an honourable thing to include?
ReplyDeleteIt might be honorable, but I don't agree with it, and I'm glad it's not included. Favoring children of donors is a good way to encourage donations, which are important to a private institution. And I believe there are good reasons to favor legacy admissions: legacy admissions foster a sense of tradition and continuity, enhance school pride, and likely cultivate donors. (I realize you mentioned children of faculty and not children of alumni - "legacy admissions" - but I think legacy admissions are the bigger issue.) I think the question of legacy admissions is certainly worthy of debate, but I think that ruling them out is beyond the scope of a letter like this.
Delete"No factor such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, or religious associations shall be considered OVER MERIT in any decision related to the appointment, advancement, or reappointment of academic, administrative, or support staff at any level."
DeleteSo staff appointments are meritorious.
"No factor such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, or religious associations shall be considered (Over merit?) in any decision related to student admission and aid."
While student admissions are not?
https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-treason-intellectuals-third-reich
ReplyDeleteFor anybody interested, read this piece by Niall Ferguson. It may make you sign the "Penn forward" in a heartbeat.
I think "political neutrality at the level of administration" is an excellent idea, but could be refined. For example, a government policy that affected Penn's ability to "foster excellence in research and education" (e.g., a tax on universities increasing in average SAT scores) would be something a university "at the level of administration" could have a position on. But these are details.
ReplyDeleteThe term "level of administration" is vague. Does it encompass the Department Chair? How does this affect the chairperson's role in guiding research versus maintaining impartiality?
DeleteJohn, I remember your comment in the GE..."dollars leave the hottest flame." Here is Bill Ackman's quote: "President Gay’s failures have led to billions of dollars of cancelled, paused, and withdrawn donations to the university," Ackman wrote. "I am personally aware of more than a billion dollars of terminated donations from a small group of Harvard’s most generous Jewish and non-Jewish alumni." If economics is about incentives, I suspect universities will be offloading bloated DEI bureaucracies and follow Penn's example. I wonder if this is part of UPenn faculty's calculus in their decision. It would be interesting to see if there is a decline in student applications and an increase in student transfers at these "elite" Universities.
ReplyDeleteI believe the preamble would be much improved by a brief discussion how these goals are essential to liberty and a free society and absent such functioning institutions and processes, a society can't help but regress to a totalitarian regime. To wit, the current University environment.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks to Professor Cochrane for alerting the readers of his blog to this development. I read the whole document and was disappointed by a missing trigger warning. As a German national, I should have been invited to skip the following paragraph because it made me feel considerable discomfort: "Experiences from the twentieth century teach us a clear historical lesson. European and U.S. universities that compromised their academic standards to cater to political trends or the pressures of particular interest groups required decades to reverse the damage done by those practices. Some of those universities have never recovered their previous position in the academic world." (On the off chance that Professor Cochrane or the drafters of the linked document feel offended by my criticism ... apologies if my attempt at irony was not discernible as such.)
ReplyDeleteApart from this observation I also have a real criticism - maybe "question" would be a better term - that relates to the last paragraph of the blog post (not the linked document) on competition between universities. To phrase this in a more positive manner, I hope that in the not too distant future there will be another blog post from Professor Cochrane that moves beyond "puzzlement" and puts some flesh on the bones of the hypotheses outlined with respect to universities' objective function ("whatever it is that universities compete for"). As an academic and an economist at that (albeit a macro-economist), surely Professor Cochrane must have a better understanding of what is going on than what is sketched out here.
The paragraph referred to (at least in my reading) implies a market failure ("a lot of great talent for sale cheap") while also implying that the actors involved behave in a rational fashion and I do not (yet) see how the two claims fit together.
The reason why I find this question so interesting is personal experience of a very similar (I think) phenomenon in a different context. Having left academia many, many moons ago I work in an industry in which people say one thing as a conference speaker and something quite different when you have a one-on-one discussion over coffee during a conference break. Many of them, I suspect (for a number of individuals I know this to be the case), would rather not have to toe the party line and in that sense they represent the "talent for sale cheap". However, on the assumption that they prefer to stay in that particular industry (which, I think, is also a reasonable assumption to make with respect to academic talent), I do not really see any institution or organisation that would or could lure them away with a credible promise of being allowed to speak their mind (not toe the party line) because no institution or organisation has an incentive to do so. Painting with a very broad brush, what I refer to as the party line is so pervasive in that industry that not publicly contradicting it is a conditio sine qua non for any institution or organization (and, by implication, individual) operating in the field. In the case of the industry that I am referring to I think that I have a pretty good idea of what it is that makes the two observations (1. people would be willing to be paid less in exchange for the freedom to speak their mind; 2. no institution has an incentive to make any such offer) consistent with each other: Again, painting with a very broad brush, every business case that exists in that industry is driven by public policy and that public policy is predicated on what I am referring to as the party line. As long as public policy does not change (a development by and large external to the industry), there is no reason why that situation would not persist.
I could at most speculate whether a similar mechanism might not be in operation in the "academia industry" but since this reply is already rather long I shall not attempt to do so. Many thanks at any rate for the post and I hope to be reading more on this topic!
Those German “intellectuals”at least thought they were making Civilization STRONGER. Of course they weren’t.
ReplyDeleteToday’s current American “intellectuals” are actively trying to tear down Civilization. Unfortunately for us normals they may yet succeed.
Colleges & Universities can’t be reformed.
They should ALL be totally defunded.
As a people we should restart from scratch.
I signed the Vision declaration, although I studied at NU and now I am outside of the US. I think that it is interesting that this Identity Agendas have not gone as far in other countries. Maybe it would be interesting to know why the US is so worried about this. Other countries like the UK, France, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands are also multi-ethnic and multi-cultural.
ReplyDeleteThe Ten Commandments has a longer provenance than any university's charter or bylaws, yet that has not prevented transgressions of the covenants of Mosaic Law. No writing, however well-intentioned, is sufficient in and of itself. Nor do the proposed articles -- principles, if you prefer -- prevent that which is proscribed, for one can argue that the negative is as justified as the positive in the search for 'truth'. For without the one, the other cannot be affirmed, except by faith, and vice versa. And, in our enlightened state, faith is no longer the bedrock of civilization that it once was (if it ever was).
ReplyDeleteNor is tearing down those institutions the answer. For what would you put in their place?
Education starts with the child, not with the adult, as every educator worth her salt should know. It doesn't start with the University. Though it may well end with the University. If you've lost the universities today, it is because you neglected the education of the children a decade ago.
You had it perfect but messed it up: "Universities stand at a crossroads. Do universities choose pursuit of knowledge, the robust open and uncomfortable debate that requires; excellence and meritocracy, even if as in the past that has meant admitting socially disfavored groups? Or do universities exist to advance, advocate for, and inculcate a particular pretty far left identitarian political agenda? Choose."
ReplyDeleteyou mean to say: "Universities stand at a crossroads. Do universities choose pursuit of knowledge, the robust open and uncomfortable debate that requires; excellence and meritocracy, even if as in the past that has meant admitting socially disfavored groups? Or do universities exist to advance, advocate for, and inculcate a particular political agenda? Choose."
just because today's version of the favoured agenda is pretty far left is incidental to your point. Would you actually be ok with it if it was a political agenda you liked? I thought not.
Consider sending your kids and money to Yeshiva University or Notre Dame.
ReplyDeleteI applaud John Cochrane for his commentary.
John. It is a nice vision, but as always the problem is not in lofty statements but in their interpretation and implementation on the ground. And the statements already includes weasel words that allow it to mean all things to all people.
ReplyDelete"Undergraduate, graduate, and professional curricula must provide students with the skills to be successful citizens in whatever role they choose to pursue."
Simply leaving the word "citizens" out, changes the implications enormously. Do Universities really have a duty to teach us to be citizens? Whose criteria for success should we adopt? What is the acceptable trade-off (and who should decide it) between success as a citizen and success as, say, physicist?
Actions speak louder than words; how will this translate in to action when most faculties ( and probably Penn, but I do not know) are quite biased lacking conservative or libertarian oriented professors and with tenure what will get these ideological oriented professors to change their tune? Worthy ambition, but how long will it take to achieve an equilibrium?
ReplyDeleteNiall Ferguson has put the university presidents' responses before Congress in a historical context that leaves not a shred of doubt as to the proper response to the university presidents' rationalizations.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-treason-intellectuals-third-reich?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2FNiall%2520Ferguson&utm_medium=reader2
Anyone interested in the topic of this post would probably find the following two-part article by Heather MacDonald in City Journal worth reading (it is a fairly long read but I thought that it was very much worth reading in that it provides very valuable background to the above discussion of "Penn 2.0":
ReplyDeletePart 01 of 02
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-academy-at-the-crossroads
Part 02 of 02
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-academy-at-the-crossroads-part-two
“Education:
ReplyDeleteA central goal of education is to train students to be critical thinkers, virtuous citizens, and ethical participants in free and open but civilized and respectful debate that produces, refines, and transmits knowledge.”
Who, pray tell, defines “virtuous” and “ethical”?
I think you are going to like this
ReplyDeletehttps://news.vanderbilt.edu/2023/12/14/sydney-savion-named-vanderbilts-inaugural-vice-chancellor-for-people-culture-and-belonging/
Keep it simple universities — just search for the truth! Everything else will fall in place …
ReplyDelete100%
ReplyDeleteI can't find a list of who on the faculty was involved in drafting it. Should be open, not anonymous. The first listed signature is Bari Weiss. Maybe she was consulted.
ReplyDelete